Hey all! Another weekly thread is here.
This time I am also hoping for some feedback!
If anyone has any ideas for more weekly thread topics you would like to see, go ahead an leave a comment below!
Doom seems like a solid start, it was revolutionary. You could also push it to 1990. As for an end date I’d have to think about that. 2000 or 2003 gives a 10 year range with a lot of influential releases, but might be a bit limited. If you did 2013 that’s a 20 year range, but it could also be a shifting time frame where it is for games of a certain age. If it was 10 years or older games then it would start with an end date of 2013 and the range would expand every year. The issue with that is it would lose focus on older games eventually.
I was thinking Doom as a sort of watershed moment in gaming, and going earlier than that and you could argue those titles belong on the already-existing retro gaming communities.1993 actually had both Doom and the first FIFA, it’s got a lot going for it as a start year.
Looking at releases for 2013 though we have things like GTA V, BioShock: Infinite and The Last of Us. I definitely would hesitate to call those “old school games”. 2011 has Skyrim. Does that qualify? Otherwise I’m starting to feel more drawn to the 1990-2010 timeframe; nice round numbers and should sort of capture the era of classic gaming. 2010 has Red Dead Redemption 1, Mass Effect 2 and Civilization 5. Is it fair to say those are some of the last old school games or do we need to go older? A two decade window seems good.
I agree that an open ended timeframe would lead to lost focus over time. If it’s 10+ years old as the criteria, it would mean we’re just 2 years away from The Witcher 3 qualifying for a community meant for stuff like Fallout 1&2. That just feels… wrong.
Yeah good points on open ended timeframe and the 2013 end date. 2010 seems pretty good, the only odd one out for that list would be civ 5 because it’s so widely played.
I’m in my 30s now so I have to remember that someone who was 5 in 2010 would be 18 now, and red dead redemption 1 would definitely be considered old. I think that’s a solid timeframe, 1990 to 2010. If Lemmy ever gets big enough to warrant it there could eventually be games by decades communities as well.
If you don’t care about round numbers and it being exactly two decades you could also do 1993-2009, starting with Doom and ending with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. There is a different kind of symmetry to that, and I honestly kind of like it.
